Tag: cream cheese

Eat Dirt Dessert

Here’s another no-bake recipe; sorry, but life is just not always what we expect, no?  I’ll get back to baking soon, but right now I’m at a time where I need less time/fuss recipes.  So my youngest munchkin turned 6!  I can’t believe it; my boys are just growing way too fast.  Being super strapped for time, I suggested this for his dessert and he loved it.  I adapted it from a recipe that was given to me twenty years ago (gulp :)).  It’s wonderfully creamy with a hit of chocolate and is pretty fast to put together (I think I took 30 minutes start to finish.).

All you need are Oreo cookies, vanilla pudding mix, milk, butter, cream cheese, and confectioner’s sugar.  I use lactose-free, fat-free milk ’cause that’s what I drink.  I also use Neufchatel cream cheese, which is lower in fat yet still really good, but everything else is the non-low versions.  Feel free to lighten up this recipe as you so desire with low sugar/fat or sugar free / fat free products.

EAT DIRT DESSERT 

Ingredients:

2 small packages (6.8 oz, 192 g all total) of instant vanilla pudding mix

4 cups (900 g) cold milk

1 stick (1/2 c., 113 g) butter

1/3 c. (45 g) confectioner’s sugar

1 package (8 oz, 227 g) Neufchatel cream cheese

1-1/2 containers (12 oz, 340 g all total) cool whip, thawed in the fridge

1-1/2 packages (24 oz, 680 g all total) Oreos (I use regular; use whichever you prefer.)

colored sprinkles

Directions:

1. Put pudding mix in a large bowl.  Mix in milk and set aside for a few minutes to firm up some.

2. Cream together butter and cream cheese in a large mixing bowl.  Use medium to medium-high speed and the flat beater if using a stand mixer.

3. Sift the confectioner’s sugar if lumpy and add to the butter/cream cheese mixture.  Mix well.

4. Stir in prepared pudding and cool whip.

5. Place Oreo cookies about a dozen at a time in a ziploc bag and smash with a rolling pin or the back of a small, sturdy frying pan.  An 8″ cast iron skillet makes quick work of this :))  Once turned to crumbs, place in a medium bowl and set aside.   Don’t worry if they’re a bit lumpy.  Continue until all cookies are crushed.

6.  Layer the cookies and cream mixtures in a trifle dish, clean flower pot, clean dump truck (serve with a shovel :)), or other deep dish, starting and ending with the dirt.  Sprinkle dirt layers with colorful sprinkles if so desired; I don’t, but it would be very colorful and kids would love it :)).  If you have any leftover cream mixture, it freezes well so you can save it.

7.  I sprinkled the top with candy sprinkles, but you can add gummy worms or wrap the bottom of a plant in plastic wrap and stick it down in there to make it look like a potted plant.

Enjoy!

Cream Cheese Thumbprint Cookies

This recipe was given to me by my aunt in Michigan originally; she is an amazing cook.  I just modified it a bit to make a thumbprint cookie out of it.  There is a lot you can do with this cookie for one with so few ingredients – four!  Egg, cream cheese, butter, and cake mix.

To make the thumbprint cookie, I of course added one more ingredient, jam.

You could use sooo many different kinds of cake mix tho.  I use Butter, but you could use Yellow, Devil’s Food, or whatever your favorite is.  You may want to add an extra egg for Devil’s Food since cocoa tends to create a dryer product unless more moisture/fat is added.  You could also omit the thumbprint and sprinkle with colored sugar.  Red and/or green sprinkled cookies are especially pretty at Christmas 🙂

A note on the brand of cake mix.  I have been told for as long as I can remember that I should buy stock in Duncan Hines.  They have received lots of free advertising from me over the years.  When I buy a mix, that’s all I buy.  Unless you have found a cake mix that is as consistently moist as Duncan Hines, if you use a different brand of cake mix for this recipe, I recommend adding an extra egg for moisture.

You just mix the ingredients together, refrigerate for an hour, drop them out onto parchment lined cookie sheets, and bake.  For thumbprints, I baked them for 7 minutes, pulled them out, used a round 1/2 teaspoon measure to make a nice dip in them, and put in about a 1/2 teaspoon of slightly warmed jam.

I then returned them to the oven for about 3 minutes and pulled them out.

For blue and gold cookies for cubscouts, I used a pureed homemade fresh blueberry pie filling for the thumbprint 🙂

Ingredients:

1 extra large egg

1 butter-flavored cake mix (I prefer Duncan Hines by far)

1 package (8 oz, 114 g) cream cheese (Neufchatel ok; this has less fat than regular cream cheese.)

1/2 stick (2 oz, 57 g) butter

1/4 c. (80 g) raspberry jam, or whatever flavor you like

Directions:

1) Cream together cream cheese and butter using either a wooden spoon or the flat beater attachment on a stand mixer.

2) Add in cake mix and egg and continue mixing.  Once thoroughly mixed, cover with wrap and refrigerate for an hour.

3) Preheat oven to 350F (177C).  While preheating, drop cookies onto a parchment lined cookie sheet using either a cookie scoop or knife and spoon.

4) Bake for 7 minutes.  Meanwhile, preheat jam either in pyrex cup in warm water or in a microwave.  You just need to warm it enough to drop it by spoon into the cookies.  Do not liquify it 🙂

5) If making thumbprint cookies:  After 7 minutes, pull the cookies out.  They may have a few brown tips on the cookies here and there, but will not have much.  Use a 1/2 teaspoon measuring spoon to make a little dip in the middle of them.  Add in warmed jam.  I found it easier to use a 1/4 teaspoon measure to do this, having it nicely rounded so I was really putting in slightly under 1/2 of a teaspoon of jam into each cookie.

If _not_ making thumbprints, do not pull them out until they are done, after about 10 minutes.

6)  Put the cookies back in the oven for 3 minutes.

7) Pull the cookies out of the oven and cool on a rack.  They’re bottoms should be a nice golden brown, but the tops will just have a few brown tips.

These are a very different cookie for some people since they’re yellow, but one bite of this soft, flavorful cookie and they’ll be won over 🙂

Dessert Reception

Hi all!  Over the coming weeks I’ll show you recipes for these, but right now, I would just like to show you pictures from a private wine/dessert reception that I made the desserts for this past weekend.

One of the goodies I made were ooey, gooey, chocolately Brigadeiros, a Brazillian candy which I took the liberty of making more chocolaty and less sweet as well as adding some vanilla to.

These are some of the tins that I used in making three kinds of tartlets…

The tartlets were Peas in a Pod, where I made a fresh blueberry pie filling and put a couple of berries on each of the tartlet shells,

Scheherazade, which I adapted from Flo Braker’s Sweet Miniatures, a tartlet with candied craisins (sorry Flo; fresh cranberries were not available; besides, I actually liked the craisins 🙂 and pomegranate seeds,

and Poirettes, also adapted from Sweet Miniatures, a tartlet with tons of flavor going on – pear, almond, rum (just a teeny bit), vanilla, lemon, apricot, and chocolate!  It came together beautifully…

Pardon the funky picture; I can’t get the blog to accept the rotated picture.  The Poirettes are in the middle with Cinnamon Twists (made out of a cottage cheese pastry dough!) surrounding them.

In addition to the tartlets, I made several cookies.  Drei Augen, also adapted from guess where? 🙂  yep, Sweet Miniatures, are an almond, shortbread german cookie (the name translates to three eyes) with a raspberry jam filling (sorry again Flo, I’m not a currant person so didn’t think I’d like currant jam in them.  I’ll try it sometime when I’m not making them for a reception).  I made four desserts for the reception from her book ’cause it was so perfect for this kind of event.  However, beware there are a few errors in the book 😦  Still a wonderful book tho!

The Drei Augen are the cookies around the outside.  In the middle are TCT bites, a triple chocolate torte made into bite-sized cakes.  Mmmmmm good! 🙂

Cream Cheese Thumbprint cookies I adapted from a recipe that I got from my aunt many, many years ago.  I’ve always loved these cookies, but have never done them as thumbprints before.  I wanted to add some color to them tho so voila!

Last of the cookies were a plain shortbread cookie, which I liked so much when I made these from thekeenancookbook.com, that I decided to use them here.  Unfortunately, I forgot to get a picture of them tho 😦  I also forgot to take a picture of the salted, burnt caramel flavored chocolate coins tho I put some in the freezer so I’ll still post these later.  I originally got the recipe from foodwishes.blogspot.com video recipes.

And the little boy showing off the cheesecake cookies with his hand?  My youngest munchkin…

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